Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

I’m Lieutenant Deviled Yeggs.  I work homicide in the big city of Tracy.  Working for me are my old partners: Detective Sgt. Jim Wednesday and Detective Poached Yeggs, my nephew who is slowly becoming a good detective.

We had yet another slow day in Tracy homicide.  Poached handled a couple of bar fights that went too far.  There were plenty of witnesses as to who started it and ended it in each case.  Otherwise Jim was working cold cases, and I was awaiting the mail.  Okay, the mail arrives whether you are waiting for it or not, but if you pace around and occasionally say, “Where is that mailman?” then it looks like you are doing something.  Captain Hart was looking at me, chuckling.  I learned the routine from him when he was a lieutenant and I was a brand-new detective, learning from my mentor.  I learned from the best.

If I had known what was coming in the mail, I would have taken the day off.

Among the usual mail, the mailman delivered a large business envelope.  There was no return address.  The postage stamp showed it had come from a post office in New York City.  I opened the envelope and poured out the contents.

There were twelve clear plastic envelopes, each containing tickets for one thing or another.  There was also a letter using a font that looked like clipped letters from a newspaper.  It read:

HELLO, LIEUTENANT YEGGS,

ARE YOU INTO PUZZLES?  YOUR DAUGHTER IS!  SHE AND YOUR GRANDFATHER TRADE CODED MESSAGES.  HE IS GOOD WITH PUZZLES.  HE TAUGHT A GIRL HIS TRICKS AND SHE IS A PROFESSOR BY DAY AND A CODEBREAKER BY NIGHT.

YES, I KNOW MANY THINGS.  GET YOUR PUZZLE SOLVING TEAM TOGETHER.  IT WILL TAKE ALL THREE OF THEM.

HAVE THEM SOLVE THE CODE.

HAVE I DONE ANYTHING WRONG?  LET THEM FIND OUT.  LET THEM FIND ME.  IF THEY CANNOT, NO ONE CAN.  I HAVE HEARD THEY ARE THE BEST.  NOW IT IS TIME TO PROVE SO.  YOU DO NOT WANT ME TO SEND YOU MORE ENVELOPES WITH MORE CLUES.  THAT WOULD MEAN THAT I HAVE STRUCK AGAIN.

COME NOW. LIEUTENANT, TIME IS RUNNING OUT.

TICK, TICK, TICK!

AND DON’T BOTHER CHECKING FOR FINGERPRINTS.  THAT DULLARD OF A MAILMAN IS PROBABLY THE ONLY ONE TO LEAVE ANY.

FAREWELL FOR NOW.

KISSES. XXXX.

I yelled, “Jim, drop everything.  Get crime scene in here now!  Gisele, call the school and have Sophie come here.  Call T.R.U.S.T.  And see if Pauline Niblick can be here quickly.  I’m calling Pink Lady and seeing if she can get GrandPa in here.”

It took a while to get our “codebreaker” team in the office.  We had a lot of things to figure out.  We could let them examine the tickets since crime scene said there was no fingerprints on any of the tickets or the plastic covers.  The only fingerprints on the envelope were that of the mailman, just as the perpetrator said.  Standard procedure was to check for wires or switches and use tweezers.  My fingerprints were not on the letter.  With holograms on nearly all the tickets, it was clear that the tickets were not fakes.

After the codebreakers had looked at the real thing, they noted that there were no markings on the tickets.  There was no evidence that the tickets had been used.  And none of the tickets were for events in the United States.  The social events included an opera at the Sidney Opera House, a musical at the O2 (London), a classical concert at the Vienna Music Society, a rock concert at Nippon Budokan in Tokyo, a ballet at Dalhalla in Sweden, and train tickets from Munich to Nuremberg, Germany in December (Nüremberger Christkindlemarkt).  The sporting events were the Australian Open (Tennis), World Baseball Classic (a game in Taiwan), World Championship of Table Tennis from Durban, South Africa, World Cup Cricket (India), World Cup Rugby (France), and World Championship of handball (Women) with tickets for a game in Denmark.

There were no events in the USA, but two tickets for each event (last year) were mailed from New York and addressed to Lt. Deviled Yeggs in Tracy.  No tickets had been used.

Each team member of the codebreakers got copier copies of the tickets, both sides.

After a week of pulling hair, the codebreakers got together at Lily the Pink in a small conference room so that GrandPa could have access to oxygen if he needed it.  He was getting better, but the recovery was slow.  He even walked into the room, but he was panting when he sat down.

Sophie acted as the leader of the codebreakers, “Did you get anything?”

Pauline said, “I looked at the ticket numbers.  Nearly every ticket pair were consecutive numbers.  When you buy online, you often have two people purchasing at the same time and they might skip a number.  That was the only discrepancy.  No ticket number was a code for anything.  The seats, always side-by-side, meant nothing either.  What about you, Millie?”

GrandPa, Millie to Pauline, Gwen, and Mary Tozer, said, “I did what I do with you, Sophie.  I arranged the tickets and seat numbers, names of the performers, names of the concerts, all that, in alphabetical order, and then in chronological order.  I took the information and did a spiral regression, upside down, backwards, everything.  I got bupkis, nada, nothing, zilch.”

Sophie groaned, “Me, too.  The letter to Dad said there was a code.  But could some psychotic twerp send a message to the police just to waste their time?”

Pauline groaned, “It happens more than you think, even though that is against the law.  It pulls the police away from legitimate duties to protect and serve.”

The others nodded.

Sophie said, “I think this is going to take a Nero Wolfe approach.”  She pulled out her cellphone and called a familiar number.  “Emmett, Sweetie, go to the kitchen and bring me six beers on a silver tray.”  …  “Of course, root beer is fine.”  …  “Absolutely, sugar free, you don’t want to see me weighing in at a seventh of a ton, do you?  Thanks, sweetie.”

Sophie propped her head up with one arm while she strummed her fingers with the other hand.  Pauline and GrandPa could hardly keep from laughing out loud.

Emmett entered with six mini cans of root beer, each with 7.5 ounces of diet root beer (about 220ml each).  At least it was a caffeine-free brand.

Sophie turned to Emmett, “Fritz, I distinctly said bottles.  How can I keep up with how many I have emptied if I do not have the bottle caps to count afterwards?  Fritz!  Think!  I have a case to solve here!  I do not need distractions!”

Emmett did not leave.  He sat next to Pauline and whispered, “Who is Fritz and why is Sophie so weird today?  She is usually weird, but not like this.  Don’t get me wrong, I love her weirdness, but I would at least like to know how I became Fritz?”

Pauline snickered, “Sophie is trying the channel her inner Nero Wolfe.  It is a good method when you are stuck to attack the problem from a totally different mindset, but this is over the top.  She is following Nero Wolfe’s normal procedure.  Fritz is Fritz Brenner, the master chef and king of the kitchen.  Archie Goodwin is usually taking notes, but I have no idea who in this room is supposed to be Archie.”

Emmett asked, “Like a séance?”

Sophie snapped, “I need quiet, Archie!  Quit talking!”

GrandPa said, “Pauline is Archie.  Please, let me be Saul Panzer.  Please, I don’t want to be the orchid guy who stays on the roof.  Not Theodore Horstmann.”

Sophie growled.  They all got quiet.

Pauline wrote on her notepad for Emmett’s benefit. “No séance.  Nero Wolfe was a fictional detective who rarely left his brownstone, having the clues sent to him.  He weighed a seventh of a ton, about 286 pounds because he never exercised, and he loved to eat a lot of exotic foods.  Sophie is just trying to think outside the box.  I think we are wasting time, but if she comes up with something, it will be worth it.  We have nothing so far.”

She drank a couple of root beers.  Sophie closed her eyes.  After about ten minutes of Sophies lips working in and out – think a combination of kissing, chewing, and breathing through your mouth, all at the same time – Sophie’s eyes opened.  She gasped.

Sophie said, “GrandPa, what is said about sailors in every port?”

GrandPa laughed, “A sailor has a different gal in every port.”

Sophie said, “And why would anyone buy two tickets to anything?”

Pauline said, “They were expecting to be accompanied to the event, but neither ticket was used.”

Sophie said, “So, the event before the ticketed event is the one where the perpetrator killed his lover.”

GrandPa said, “We have no evidence of that, and I do not like the lover idea.  It’s too messy.”  Pauline concurred.

Another couple of root beers, and another five minutes of lip movements.

Sophie said as she opened her eyes, “New working hypothesis.”

GrandPa said, “Hypothesis?  You are a freshman in high school, and you have a hypothesis?”

Sophie just stared at him for a few seconds. “My hypothesis is that we are working with a con man.  On the social calendar side, he has befriended angels of the arts to take their money.  One figured out his scam, and he had to kill them all.  Since he is working with moneyed ladies, not necessarily the richest, but one who gives money to their favorite performing art.  The sports people could be fans.  How does that work?”

Pauline asked, “But who are we talking about?”

Sophie waved a hand.  “There are sportscasters and reporters that follow the sports around the world.  Some of them report on the human interest stories. Who is that offbeat reporter with the loud jackets?”

GrandPa suggested, “I would say Heywood Hale Broun, but you two wouldn’t know who he was.  I think you are thinking about Barkley Banter.”

Sophie nodded, “Yeah, Barkley Banter.  He travels the world to follow the major sports, although women’s handball?  Really?!  But he probably has others do research for him.  He has a camera crew.”

Pauline suggested, “We need to find someone who has a thick passport.”

Sophie asked, “Aren’t passports all the same?”

Pauline laughed, “No, Sweetie, when you use up all the pages for stamps, they add more pages to the passport.  If it were not for all of Millie’s aliases, he would have had a thick one.  Within a year or two, Mashie and I will need more pages.  With a passport good for ten years, the people who travel for business around the world often need added pages.”

GrandPa laughed, “I had a passport really thick once, but that was part of the alias that I was given, the world traveler.  The bad thing is that they don’t make passport wallets big enough to hold anything that thick.”

The door burst open.  Poached walked in with Missy, Menzie, and a middle-aged couple.

Poached gasped, “Oh, I thought the conference room was open.  Umm, Mr. and Mrs. Menzies, this is a group that is nicknamed the ‘codebreakers.’  They are Sophie Yeggs, my cousin, Millennium Yeggs, my great-GrandPa, and Dr. Pauline Niblick, who is my aunt’s assistant head of the department at the university.  I have been investigating what others were supposed to do on the Ruth Collins case.  The Menzies are the parents of the boy who slept with Missy and thus the grandparents of Menzie.  It was all set up by Mr. Menzie’s brother before their son left for Afghanistan where he was killed in action.”

Everyone gave their condolences to the Menzies, but Mrs. Menzies said, “He was our only child.  We thought we had lost the only heir.  We thought all hope was lost until this nice detective told us about Menzie.  It was hard telling Missy and Menzie that our son was killed, but we now have a family again.  For years, we had blamed God, but we now have reason to praise Him.”

Sophie suggested, “Could Missy continue the tour or take the Menzies to her apartment?  Poached, I have some questions about our latest code breaking.”

Missy said she would gladly take them to her new apartment.  Since Menzie could produce enough milk for Sammie now, they moved into a new apartment after Angus and Missy were married, and out of the Evident’s apartment.

Sophie asked, “Po, we need to find out who was an angel of the arts in various cities around the world or sports fanatics to the extreme.  Can we do that on social media?”

Poached chuckled, “You need to set up fake accounts and you have to post like you are the expert in that field.  If you try to use keywords, they’ll see right through you.”

Pauline suggested, “We have experts in the five fine arts performances.  Gordie and Anahera (Angel) are our rugby experts.  How would we find a dead angel or fanatic?”

Poached suggested, “Start up an account.  Post the right comments to get Artificial Intelligence suggesting the right followers, friends, whatever.  Then be very careful in asking vague questions.  It might work, but don’t accept any requests from NYC or Tracy.  Try to keep them all foreign contacts.  What are you onto?”

Sophie shrugged, “A long shot.  I’m going to call Daddy.”

Poached excused himself to find the others of his group.  Sophie hit the Daddy button.  “Daddy, we have a working hypothesis that the perp is a conman who was outed by one of his marks and he decided to clean house.  I tried the Nero Wolfe technique, and we got an idea.  The code is not what the tickets were about, not in anything on the tickets.  But Emmett brought me six beers to drink, and I came up with the theory.  Thought you should know.  I gotta go.  I mean, I really have to go.  All of a sudden, six beers do something to you.  I have got to GO.”  She ran from the room.

I am a homicide detective.  I knew how to kill people.  I had seen hundreds of ways to do it.  I had killed Emmett Dalton ten different ways in my mind when the phone rang again.

It was Pauline Niblick, laughing, “Sophie left out one important word, ‘root beer’.  Millie and I had a hard time trying to not laugh when she went through her routine, but we have a working idea.  Poached came by with the Menzies and he suggested social media accounts to see if angels of the arts or sports fanatics might have been killed.  He told us not to accept friend requests from Tracy or NYC.  It will take us a long time to get results that way, but a frontal attack might tip off our perpetrator.  Do you have a working hypothesis of your own?”

I suggested, “That’s about it.  A working hypothesis.  We have no idea if this is for real.”  After I hung up, I mused.  Sophie had no idea that we were thinking that the only way I got the tickets was that the person of interest knew a lot about Tracy, maybe from here.  He or she had some mad skills to learn about the codebreakers.  That was not common knowledge.  In fact, no one except close friends should know that Pauline moonlighted for the Feds.  We had already called Hugh McAdoo to inform him of a breach in security, and he was lining up contacts with Interpol, in case we had anything that actually needed investigating.

This one was going to take a long time.

Credits

The idea of the envelope with tickets and a taunt to get Sophie, GrandPa, and Pauline involved came in a dream.  I had never dreamt of one of my fictional characters before.  Oddly, the very next night, I was dreaming about something totally different (nothing that I can remember) and a voice interrupted the dream saying, “Don’t forget about the envelope full of tickets!!!”  That had never happened either.

Do not expect a solution next week.  My brain has not gotten that far.  And the idea of using social media to obtain information might take weeks.  I can use that excuse to let this story cool off until I figure out who it might be, but I think Deviled Yeggs has a few people in mind already, all with social connections galore, and a social nightmare if it gets out that one of them is being investigated.

As for Heywood Hale Broun, he was one of my favorite sportscasters back in the day.  He wore wild jackets, and he reported on the oddest things, like how many miles of adhesive tape were used by the trainers for the Green Bay Packers before a game.  His reporting was offbeat.  His attire was offbeat.  And he had a handlebar mustache.  I perfected my handlebar mustache only once, trimming it back after a couple of years – just too much work.  Barkley Banter is a fictional name, but fitting of a sportscaster, barking banter without really saying much.

As for the thick passports, I filled my passport once, but the passport expired soon after the last stamp.  Most of the guys I worked with had a passport that was twice or three times the thickness of the originally issued passport.

As for the Nero Wolfe impression, it was spot on, although Wolfe drank beer, a variety of brands over the years, all delivered unopened by Fritz Brenner.  Wolfe used a gold bottle opener, back in the day when bottle openers were required, and he counted the caps to keep track of how many he drank.  Yes, almost never leaving the brownstone, spending half his day on the roof with Theodore Horstmann, tending orchids.  Not ever wanting to work at all unless the money was low.  The beer thing.  The Gourmand thing.  Yes, Nero Wolfe was eccentric, and one of my two favorite detectives.  The other being Lord Peter Wimsey.